


Carvings

by theWK



Series: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist [4]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Major character death - Freeform, Other, Some pining, Spiders, Violence, changeling character who uses multiple names/pronouns, scorpions, tfw you dont even realize youre dying, theres some very sappy stuff in here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28598850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theWK/pseuds/theWK
Summary: They were so careful. They tried so hard to be careful.They hadn’t been sitting with their dinner for more than ten minutes when Jonas’s attention was caught by a tap from across the cavern.He gripped V’s arm, staring into the darkness with eyes wide.“Something… is… here…”
Relationships: Jonas deAtelier/"V"
Series: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918270





	Carvings

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic with two endings, the first being this chapter, and the second being the next, which picks back up near the end of this one. 
> 
> This is also technically a WIP as I read through and fix errors! Please excuse the 500 updates that will be happening over the next day or two!

⚝

* * *

Jonas had begun to regret agreeing to follow his friends into their newest adventure. 

He should have listened to his family, to those who had a better understanding of what he would be getting himself into. V had insisted on coming along, _if he simply must follow his friends to their death, at the very least, to make sure you don’t join them._ Jonas knew he couldn’t convince them otherwise, and so they were lowered into the Yawning Portal together.

By now they had spent over a week in the darkness.

The party had been moving through the Underdark for most of the perceived day, facing small groups of enemies here and there, and the evening was drawing to a close. Facing endless surprises one after another wore them out of their energy as well as their magic, with burst after burst of horrific creatures and violent rival explorers in the city’s depths. The group was exhausted and more than ready to settle down, but unanimously decided to push on through a few more hallways before making camp to try to get away from some of the smell of their last battlefield. 

Jonas, after days of hushed and heated conversation with V, finally agreed to forfeit in his mission to follow his former crowd down into the mage’s dungeons. In spite of his worries they seemed to be entirely capable of taking care of themselves, what with the addition of the cleric among their newfound friends.

For fear of Jonas changing his mind when he woke in the company of the party, V convinced him to push and keep moving, to backtrack a while and camp on their own somewhere closer to the rope out of this hell and back to the city surface. He kept his goodbyes short with shared promises to check in on each other at the manor in a few day’s time, leaving the party to continue their nonsense questing on their own. 

The pair doubled back through familiar caverns and tunnels, through empty rooms filled with hours and then days old rotting enemies. They took their time, moving with some small amount of confidence that they wouldn’t encounter much of anything after clearing their way through the area so recently, though V still silently scoped out each yawning expanse and dark curve of hallway before leading Jonas blindly through. 

They were so careful. They tried so hard to be careful.

Back through the safe rooms where they had already cleared, and farther from the unknown rooms ahead where enemies may wait for ambush, they finally found a comfortable cavern to make camp in. The extra few hours of walking had given them a decent head start, though it left their feet aching for rest. 

Jonas smoothed out their bedrolls on a flat and dry space of rock while V scouted out the cavern, doing one final inspection before returning, satisfied and ready for sleep. They hadn’t been sitting with their dinner for more than ten minutes when Jonas’s attention was caught by a tap from across the cavern.

He gripped V’s arm, staring into the darkness with eyes wide.

_“Something… is… here…”_

He barely breathed out the words and V froze, instantly going on the alert and shooting their gaze across the space. After what felt like an age of silence, they stood, hand on their rapier.

“Stay here. I’m going to check it out.”

“Corbeau—” He caught the edge of their cloak with his hand.

“I’ll be fine. If something happens you’ll be able to hear me, but I have to check.”

Jonas swallowed against the ball of worry in his throat and nodded, reluctantly releasing their cloak and bringing his hands to rest on his lap as V stepped off the stone and out of his sight.

  
  


The beasts came out of nowhere. 

At first there was only one. Then another ran out of the shadows.

Within seconds they were completely overwhelmed with hissing spiders and scorpion-like creatures. They burst out from cracks and crevices he didn't know existed, barreling into the startled pair and into each other, and they found themselves caught up in a monstrous crossfire. Hissing and clanging rang out from every direction and nearly drowned out the shouts between Jonas and V, the shorter boy still unable to spot his friend in the darkness and chaos. He lit up a flame blade with some of his sparsely remaining magic and swung it into the faces of the threatening creatures, calling out for them from his small radius of light. 

He caught the sheen of their blade swinging from the corner of his eye periodically as they both fought off the creatures the best they could. V at least seemed to be holding their own with some level of success as Jonas heard chitinous bodies thumping to the ground. Jonas held his footing for as long as he could, already low on spells and strength, and burning out the last of what he had. He was barely able to hold his beast form for more than ten seconds before he was beaten back into a genasi, and maintaining concentration on his spectral blade proved too much for the amount of abuse he was taking. 

He had been bitten, clawed, and stung more times than he could count, and his body was wracked with pain. The panicked shouts between himself and V were the only things letting them know the other was still standing. 

The clatter of a blade on the stones struck his ears, and Jonas’s head whipped towards the sound with alarm.

_“COR—!”_

A horrible pain struck him square in the stomach, violently piercing through his body with enough force to knock him backwards. The final spell he had been holding flickered out of his hands as he fell with a cry, splashing into the muck and vegetation at the bottom of the cavern. 

For a moment his vision went white and the world fell silent.

Pain ripped through his body like fire, spiderwebbing outwards from the deep gore in his stomach and searing through his veins. He was sure the daggerlike point of the stinger had stuck through the other side of his body with the strength of the blow, and every part of him was starting to burn as his muscles threatened to seize. The shadow of the scorpion-like creature shifted towards him once more and he cowered, gurgling as his breath caught in his throat. He desperately tried to shake off the poison threatening to stiffen his limbs as true panic started setting in.

Suddenly there was something between him and the beast.

V stood over his form on the ground, protective and desperate, parrying the beast’s claws away with their rapier. Now visible in front of him for the first time since they left to check the sound, V looked like they were in as rough of a shape as Jonas was moments before. They shoved it backwards across the slick stones and called out to Jonas over their shoulder.

“You have to get out of here!” 

There was another sharp clang of metal and a hiss, and their voice raised. 

_“Now,_ Jonas!” 

Jonas clutched his stomach, staring up at V in shock.

“Wh— _no! Not without you!”_

They jabbed their dagger into the face of the creature and it backed away once more, squealing in agony. V then whirled around on Jonas, crouching and grabbing him by the shoulders. He saw a flash of teeth smeared pink with blood as they grabbed him and looked him in the eyes.

_“_ _GO!”_

A sudden crack, and the creature struck them with a claw across the back, hard enough for their head to snap to the side. Jonas’s eyes flew wide as they toppled forwards, their hair shocking white mid-fall, and barely managed to catch Ira against his chest.

He didn’t have time to scream.  
  
The creature turned on them again, and he raked through his mind for anything he could do to get them away. Even if he could make it there he had no hope of seeing the exit, and they would surely only be chased. He clutched Ira to his chest, the changeling's body limp and damp with blood and bile. He couldn’t let him fall. Not here. Not in a place like this.

There was a distant skitter, and the creature whirled around. It was distracted, alerted by the noise, and turned to hiss over it’s newly claimed territory. 

He could heal Ira with all he had left right now, bounce him back to his feet, but how much longer could he really last if he did? How many more strikes could he land before he fell again? Surely not enough to clear the chamber, surely not enough to get them both out of here alive.

Jonas had one spell left, one he had never so much as attempted before, but it might be their only chance if he had enough power left to complete it. If he had the resources available.

It would be a risk, but he didn’t feel like he had the choice.

He began the incantation as the creature turned, its clicking mandibles and rows of reflective eyes barely visible. He buried his hand in the slimy foliage beneath them, arm still clasped around Ira like a bind, and dug through his mind again.

A plant. A tree. Something big enough. Something he has made contact with. There were so few trees in Waterdeep, he could barely recall any of them in the panic. He searched his memories desperately, flashes of the sparse nature of the city, trees too thin and manicured to move them, trees old and withered in the dead city he had never gotten close enough to remember well, a flash of his kelp forest—no, he couldn’t risk getting them out only to have him drown or be swept away. 

He screwed his eyes closed and refused to look at the creature as it stepped towards them, claws forwards and tail reeling back like a trebuchet. 

The incantation was almost complete. He needed a destination, a door, anything that could accept them through, there must be something, one thing he—

_Wait._

There was one tree he knew that could surely fit them through. One he knew very well. 

He slammed his palm to the ground in the thick and slimy undergrowth, praying that it was enough in this decrepit place to let the magic take hold as he completed the spell.

The creature lunged as the earth opened up beneath them in a flash of light, and he let himself fall through.

* * *

They tumbled and crashed out of the tree backwards, birds scattering from the ground with alarm. The pain of the impact ripped through Jonas’s body like a shockwave as he clutched Irs to his chest for dear life, coughing and gasping into his cloak. 

He let himself lie there on the ground for a few moments once their bodies stilled, heaving deep breaths of the now fresh air and letting a few sobs escape in exchange, breaking the silence of the woods they had now imposed upon in their escape. But he couldn’t sit back to revel in it just yet. 

Jonas strained to pull Ira from on top of his chest, rolling him to his side in the moss and leaves and sitting himself up. He crumpled in on himself with pain for a few seconds but pushed through it, dragging Ira to prop him up between two of the oversized roots under the tree. His head lolled to one side, hair stuck to his cheek with blood and muck. 

“...Etoile?”

Jonas inched forwards on his knees and hovered a hand under his mouth and nose. He were alive and breathing for now, thankfully, though unresponsive and surely in bad shape. His hands traveled down Ira's body in the dim light of the moon, eyes frantically searching for where the wounds were the worst. A large gash under his arm caught his attention past that of the bites and scrapes that riddled his body.

Hunched over his body like this, Jonas felt almost blind with the pain flaring from his stomach. But he had to. He had to. There wasn’t time to fuss and moan about himself. He bit through the pain and the dizziness and unlooped the scarf from Ira’s neck, bunching it up quickly in his hands and positioning it over the bleeding wound on his side. He braced his arm and clamped his hand down tightly, trying to force the blood to stay in his body. 

He had nothing left. No spells, no potions, not even the ability to wildshape after spending all he had in the fights since waking. He did his best to press hard on the wound in the hopes that he would soon come back to consciousness, squeezing as though his life depended on it, because to his knowledge, it did. 

He looked over his shoulder, to the lake and the soft moonlight bouncing off of its surface. There were little flowers blooming between the rocks at the water’s edge, what color he couldn’t tell, and a thin dark stream of their mingling blood slowly running towards it down the gentle slope of the bank. Dizzy and disoriented from the pain, he let his eyes slide closed.

“Can you hear the water? I wish you could see it.” his hand wandered to his chest, fingers brushing the polished bit of petrified wood hung around his neck, “This is where we found my pendant. That was so long ago.”

He smiled and sighed, taking the peace of this place in with his breath.

“It’s been so many years. Clement used to bring me here all the time. We would... um... we would...” 

His mind suddenly blanked, losing his path of thought as another aching wave ran through him. He stiffened and furrowed his brows for a moment, then shook his head to himself. 

“Well, it was nice, is what I mean to say. It was always very nice.”

His gaze fell to his lap. He hadn’t noticed when his legs became slicked with blood, his focus taken up by more pressing matters while the wound in his abdomen had throbbed and bled. He pulled aside the fabric of his shirt to squint at the wound in the dark, and hissed as the torn material peeled away. It didn’t look very good either, red and angry and casting dark lines across his skin, but with no magic and only one free hand he wasn’t sure what he was capable of doing about it. Jonas dropped the fabric of his shirt again, tugging his sash free and haphazardly bunched it against his own wound with a wince and a pained gurgle, keeping pressure on Ira's side with his other hand. 

There was a hiss in his ears like pouring sand, like Amiya’s stove or the wind coming through the cracks in the windows back home. He couldn’t quite place where it was coming from, but he couldn’t find the strength to be concerned at the moment. 

He focused on his breathing, panting into the night air to try and steady it, but he couldn’t. He looked out at the water again. 

“I’ve always wanted to bring you here, you know. Even before we met in person. I’ve wanted to since we were younger.”

He sighed shakily, smiling to himself.

“We should stay for a while. We aren’t far from the city but we should stay. Maybe only for a day if you don’t want to longer. I could teach you how to catch crawfish in the morning. Or scallops, if you wanted to walk down to the sea, it wouldn’t take long…”

A few late night fireflies blinked in the reeds near the water and caught his eye, blurred points of light in the darkness like living stars.

“If I ever made one of those little groves for myself, those ones that very powerful druids have, I think it would have to be in this place. Could you imagine waking up every morning here? Maybe you’ll stay with me, leave all that shit behind in the city for a while and make something out here. Maybe we could…” he paused, mind wandering for a few seconds before cutting himself short with a blush, “Well, maybe we could just go home and get a cat.”

Jonas turned his gaze from the water and back up to the tree that had granted them passage. His eyes searched around until he spotted the familiar carvings. There above their heads sat the marks he and Clement had left the first time he brought him here—a simple sun with rays for his master, and a precursory version of the little ducks foot he had so come to associate himself with over the years, worn and misshapen from the growth but still recognizable against the smooth bark. He smiled up at them, lifting his hand away from his stomach to trace their shapes in the air with his fingers. His head swam a bit, and he strained to speak. 

“You should add yours, too, since you’ve been here now.”

He looked down to Ira, his still face in the dark, feeling the beat of his pulse from the hand plastered to his side. 

The hiss in his ears felt louder, now. More of a ringing sound than before. The burning in his veins had lessened some, as had the ache in his gut, but his body was left tired in its absence. 

He shifted himself to lie down beside his friend, the few feet of movement feeling like a hundred miles, and was nearly overcome with dizziness and the sudden weight of his own head. He lowered himself into the moss and leaves on his side, groaning with the effort until he settled his weight there on the ground, back pressed to another protruding root. His arms and chest burned with the effort, mouth and ears feeling the fog of numbness.

Jonas tucked his head into Ira’s shoulder against the soft ground, just barely able to feel the faint breaths rolling across his face where it hadn’t already gone numb. He sucked in another breath, air filling his lungs with a rattle, and gripped the scarf tighter to the wound at his side with what force his arm had left. The bleeding had felt like it stopped, but he had to be sure.

Ira’s hair, starry white and speckled with blood, drifted over his cheek with the breeze. He smiled.

“Thank you for coming along to save me... I guess I owe you one.” 

He forced down another gasp of air, breath catching in his throat for a second, and winced. He could barely hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears. It almost hurt to move his lips to speak, now. 

“I don’t think this one counts, being my fault, and all…”

Jonas stilled, trying to relax the tension in his body one limb at a time.

Ira would be fine. He just had to give him a few hours. 

Jonas exhaled, sinking into the moss and soft leaves beneath them.

“Goodnight, Etoile…”

He could wait a few hours. 

His vision swirled to darkness.

_“I love you…”_

He could let himself rest for just a few hours...

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

Light broke across the surface of the lake as morning came, casting a warm glow over the rocky shoreline. 

Ira woke to the sound of birds and the ripple of water against stones a few yards away, the soft brush of grass tickling his face with the breeze, and an arm, heavy and familiar, laid over his side. Squinting against the sun in his eyes, he rolled his head to take in the new surroundings.

Having expected to see the dark and gore-slicked dungeon where he had last remembered being, this was quite a contrast for his half-asleep mind to absorb.

His eyes were crusted with dirt and exhaustion, but he could hear and feel the world around him well enough. He felt a body next to them. Jonas? It must have been. He was holding something clamped over an ache on Ira's side. Perhaps a rag, or was that something of theirs? He couldn’t tell at the moment. Ira would have thought he was dead if he weren't still in so much pain.

Mouth filled with the taste of night old blood, he blinked against the crust sealing his lashes together. He brought up a hand, the one that wasn’t pinned down securely by Jonas’s arm across his chest, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and across his dirty face. 

Their bodies were both covered in fallen leaves and nestled between the tangled roots of a tree, as though they were being cradled in it. It was the biggest tree Ira had ever seen in his own memory, and he marveled up at it from the ground, upside-down.

It felt like he’d slept for days. Then again, maybe he had. 

“Fuck, ugh...” Ira pulled in a deep breath and groaned, shrugging his shoulders and rolling his neck against the ache to try and get the stiffness out. He gazed around, eyes still bleary with exhaustion, taking in the scenery once again now that he could focus his eyes to see it. 

They were by some strange and unfamiliar lake somewhere, laying in the warm light of sunrise, flowers and grass swaying around them in the breeze. This was much more peaceful than the scene the pair had faced before they had lost consciousness.

By the nine. Jonas got them out. 

_“Wow…”_ He gave a rasping, exhausted laugh and laid his head back against the roots, marveling that Jonas’s teleportation spell had worked in such a decrepit place. 

“Ducky, you actually did it. Where are we?” 

Ira's head turned to look at him with a lopsided smile. Jonas was still asleep at his side, covered in leaves and his own wild hair. He supposed this was still a bit early, even for Jonas. If Ira was so exhausted himself, he couldn’t imagine how tired Jonas must be after that fight and whatever else came next. Maybe it would be best to let him wake when he was ready to. Ira turned his gaze back to the water.

The sun was lifting across the lake, casting everything around them in gold and making the flowers peeking out of the grass look like softly glowing lanterns. He watched for a few minutes as a cluster of ducks made their way down to glide into the lake, warm light sparkling through the water they splashed up around them. The breeze sent early autumn leaves sliding across the ground. It was like watching the earth speak a poem. 

He gave a gentle shake to the arm laid across his chest, wanting to wake Jonas to see it, too, but he didn’t stir. 

“Duckling?” 

He strained to shift, pushing his elbow into the soil and twisting slightly to face him. Ira placed a hand on his shoulder with another gentle shake, voice quieting.

“...Jonas?”

Nothing. 

His stomach sank, but he refused to think.

Despite the morning dew that had collected across the two of them while they slept, he felt… oddly dry to the touch. Ira huffed through his nose, brows furrowed, rolling to one shoulder to face him. He gently lifted Jonas's arm off his side and placed it down between their bodies. He looked like a mess, hair blown about and tangled in the wind, blood and muck from the underground caking his body and clothing. It was an awful state to be in, though Ira assumed he probably didn’t look much better himself at the moment. 

He brushed a few fallen leaves off of him before trying to organize his hair, tucking it over his shoulder and behind his ear out of the way of his face. Most of it was still tacked together with drying blood. Ira grimaced, peeling it away from his skin in chunks.

He slowly uncovered him, breath speeding up as his features came back into view until he froze, staring into his face.

Into a pair of dull, clouded eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> SSSSSSORRY ABOUT THAT BUT I DID WARN YOU
> 
> There IS an alternate ending in chapter two! It picks back up towards the end of this one, so you don't have to reread all of this for the second go.


End file.
